Kuwait Petroleum restarts Rotterdam base oil and wax plant

LONDON (ICIS)--Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) has restarted its base oil and wax plant in Rotterdam, and has started producing on-spec material from today, a company source said on Monday.

The plant was successfully restarted on Friday and took a few days to reach on-spec production, the source said. It was initially shut down after its de-waxing unit suffered a technical problem on 2 August. KPC planned to restart production on 16 August, but encountered further technical issues, according to the source.

The unit has a production capacity of 235,000 tonnes/year of base oils, and 40,000-50,000 tonnes/year of wax.

Although the plant is now running at full capacity, the source said customers will remain on allocation as the company tries to build stock ahead of its scheduled maintenance turnaround, which is due to commence in the final days of September, and will run through October and November.